Introduction to The Scarlet Letter:
The Puritans
Romanticism
Nathaniel Hawthorne Writing Style
Key:
Words in black must be copied.
Words in blue fill in the blank.
Words in green are difficult vocabulary. You can look up
definitions for optional extension credit.
Words in pink can be copied instead of the black or in addition
to the black. They help clarify the information. It’s best to copy
both.
I. Who were the Puritans?
• A. An English religious group
in 16th and 17th centuries
• B. Believed in God’s
supremacy over mankind
• C. Emphasized simplicity in
all human affairs
II. What were the beliefs of
the Puritans?
• A. Mankind inherently evil, except
for a chosen few
• B. Intense study of bible
• C. Personal morality
• D. Devil lies behind every evil deed
• E. Strong belief in the importance of
education. . .especially religious
education
• F. Strong work ethic
III. What was daily life
like?
• A. Prayer
• B. No singing, dancing, or “fun” that
did not result in a necessary
accomplished task
• C. Belief in symmetry uniqueness
breeds “roughness” in humanity
1. judgmental
2. hypocrisy
How were people punished for their
wrongdoings?
1. Benefit of clergy - the convicted may plead benefit of clergy, in which case, if they can
read a passage from the Bible without one mistake, their sentence will be reduced.
2. Stocks - the convicted will have his head and hands placed in a locked stockade for the
remainder of the day, and the community will be invited to pelt him with food. The
convicted must clean up anything he is pelted with.
3. Wearing a sign - a milder punishment than branding. The convicted must make their own
sign to hang around their neck, which indicates their crime.
4. Branding - the convicted is marked with letters that stand for their crime - HT for hog thief,
A for adulterer. The branding can be on the cheek, forehead, or more mildly on the hand or
finger.
5. Ducking stool - for women only, usually used in the case of gossip. The woman shall be
confined in a chair and dunked in water.
6. Whipping - for men only, a common punishment. A number of "lashes" is administered to
the convicted's back. Lashes usually number from 5 to 20.
7. Public shaming - a milder form of punishment, the convicted is pulled on a rope through
the town, while the community is invited to point fingers at him, tell him he is naughty, and
pelt him with small objects.
What is Romanticism?
Romanticism is a literary movement and time
period that was “a reaction against
neoclassicism. This early 19th-century
movement elevated the individual, the
passions, and the inner life. It stressed strong
emotion, imagination, freedom from classical
correctness in art forms, and rebellion against
social conventions” (VanSpanckeren).
MLA Citation:
VanSpanckeren, Kathryn. “Glossary: Romanticism.” From Revolution to Reconstruction: An Outline of American Literature.
University of Groningen. 2006. Web. 18 Feb. 2010.
Setting VERSUS Literary Period
• The Scarlet Letter isset
___ in the mid1600’s in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts.
• However, it was _______
written during the
American Romantic period in the 1850’s.
values of
• Therefore, the ideals and ______
Romanticism
___________ (as opposed to Puritanism)
are reflected in the novel.
Characteristics of the Romantic
Period/Romanticism
A. The literature focused on the power
of the individual.
- It celebrated the individual.
B. Extraordinary characters were
placed in unusual circumstances.
-Unique characters confronted unique
conflicts.
C. There was a focus on the power
and spirituality of nature.
-Nature was seen as a place of
refuge and freedom.
D. The literature exalted the wild
and scorned the artificial.
Paraphrase:
E. The literature was often set in
distant, historic, and/or exotic past.
-Romantics often (not always) set the
literature in the past.
F. Importance was placed on the
imagination and intuition.
-Individual thought is just as important
as the beliefs of an entire society.
T: The Scarlet Letter
A: Nathaniel Hawthorne
G: Romantic novel
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Writing Style
• *Symbolism*
• Personification of
Nature
• Ornate language
• Sophisticated language
• Complex sentences
• Elements of
Romanticism
• Hypocrisy of
Puritanism
Close Reading - Strategies
•
•
•
•
•
Circle phrases you like, reveal repetitive themes or images, and/or reveal other
literary techniques.
Circle words you need to define.
Underline sentences that stand out or make a point.
Make brackets around important sections of the text.
Connect important ideas, words, or phrases with arrows.
•
In the margins:
– Note any significant patterns or repetitive language.
– Identify points or arguments.
– Note any points the paragraph makes you think about.
•
Even though you cannot write in the school books, you can use post-its or take
notes in your notebooks. You could even purchase your own copy of the book so
you can write in it!
Handout
Chapter 1
The Prison-Door
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored
garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats,
intermixed with women, some wearing
hoods, and others bareheaded, was
assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the
door of which was heavily timbered with
oak, and studded with iron spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of
human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their
earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the
virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the
site of a prison.
In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed
that the forefathers of Boston had built the first
prison-house, somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill,
almost as seasonably as they marked out the first
burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round
about his grave, which subsequently became the
nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old
church-yard of King's Chapel.
Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after
the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was
already marked with weather-stains and other
indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to
its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the
ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more
antique than anything else in the new world. Like all
that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known
a youthful era.
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the
wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much
overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and
such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found
something congenial in the soil that had so early
borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.
But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at
the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this
month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be
imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to
the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned
criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that
the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to
him.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in
history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern
old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines
and oaks that originally overshadowed it,--or whether, as
there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under
the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered
the prison-door,--we shall not take upon us to determine.
Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative,
which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal,
we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers
and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to
symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found
along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of
human frailty and sorrow.